U.S. OPEN '95; Graf Shakes Seles Awake From a Glorious Dream

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She rose like a phoenix this summer after spending 28 months in limbo as she recovered from the emotional and physical trauma of being stabbed on the tennis court by a deranged German man who felt the No. 1 ranking should belong to Steffi Graf instead of her.

It took Monica Seles two years to return to the sport she knew she loved and for a time thought she had lost. And when she came back, she did it with such a vengeance that it seemed it was the rest of the competition and not her who had been idling in involuntary exile.

But the first chapter of the magnificent and, through 11 matches, invincible comeback by the 21-year-old Seles reached a tearful end yesterday when the United States Open championship was claimed by Graf, the rival to whom she is bound by the strangest and saddest of ties.

In a wildly uneven final-round match that pitted Seles against the very woman on whose behalf she was knifed in the back on April 30, 1993, Graf prevailed, 7-6 (8-6), 0-6, 6-3, and captured her third Grand Slam crown of 1995 and her 18th Grand Slam singles title over all. It marked the first time that a woman finalist was able to win the Open despite losing a set at love.

The two rivals embraced at the net after Graf, an Open champion for the fourth time and undefeated in seven finals this year, proved conclusively that she is the No. 1 player in the world for 1995. The 26-year-old German leads her career rivalry with Seles by 7-4 but had been defeated by the new United States citizen in three of their four previous Slam finals.

"It's been a dream; it seems unreal; I think I've won every Grand Slam now four times, so that's pretty amazing," said Graf, who received a beer shower from her fellow players when she got back to the locker room.

Graf, who has lost only 1 of her 40 matches this year, said she hadn't expected to survive this final. "I didn't think I had the tools for it," she said. "Monica's been playing so well since she came back, which impressed everybody, especially me."

But yesterday it was Graf who impressed Seles.

"I think Steffi played great," said Seles, who admitted her own iron concentration had more than once been frayed by controversial line calls like the one that cost her the first set's tie breaker.

"She was running down balls that very few people even go for, and she played better on the key points."

Graf, beset by yet another personal trauma not of her own making due to the August arrest and imprisonment of her father, Peter, on charges of tax evasion, called this Slam "the most difficult ordeal" through which she had ever had to persevere. Graf left Germany the day her father was arrested and has been unable to speak to him since then. Peter Graf faces a jail sentence of up to 10 years; Graf, who has not yet been cleared in the investigation, could be liable for tax penalties estimated at $80 million if he's convicted.

"There's been a lot of obstacles to climb over," said Graf, whose health, because of a suddenly sore left foot and a chronically sore bone spur in her back, has been as troublesome as her family melodrama.

Seles also called this Open a personal success story.

"Wow," said Seles, using her favorite word of the moment. "I made the right decision; I'm doing what I love to do, playing tennis, and my life is moving forward again."

The 1-hour-52-minute final ended the 20-match unbeaten streak compiled by Seles at the Open, where she was the champion in 1991 and 1992. It also ended the 11-match comeback streak she compiled until Graf's powerful performance provoked her into more errors, 42, than she could rectify with her 38 winners and 3 breaks of Graf's serve.

In the third set, it was Graf who picked up her serving tempo and, with her aim and her mental toughness just a notch superior to Seles's, secured the pivotal break in the fourth game.

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"I knew I had to play great tennis," Seles said. "I think I did play good tennis."

This was Seles's first Slam campaign since she captured her third consecutive Australian Open title at Graf's expense in January 1993.

That Slam was to be her last until this one because of the intervention of Gunther Parche, the unemployed lathe operator who stabbed her in broad daylight, and in mid-match, and then had a suspended sentence twice upheld by the same German court system that incarcerated Peter Graf.

Although she appeared oblivious to the distraction, Seles performed under heavy guard; each time she went to her changeover chair, she sat with her back to a wall, Wild Bill Hickock-style, though in Seles's case, the wall was a broad-backed security man. Aisle-wide guards also stationed themselves on the stairwells leading to the changeover area, a danger zone instead of a resting place for Seles.

"Sitting in the chair is the worst part," she said of her comeback performances, "because I used to feel safe there and now, in the back of my mind, I can't. Not yet, anyway."

The first set was so inconclusive it required a tie breaker that was decided in a controversial manner that ignited Seles to a fever pitch. Assuming she had served an ace down the middle at set point, Seles was already loping to the sideline when she was shooed back to the service line to deliver a second serve. Graf won the point with a forehand return to the corner, then converted the tie breaker after Seles blasted consecutive forehands out of bounds.

Aggravated by the way she surrendered the first set, which had been the one that determined the victor in 9 of their previous 10 matches, Seles took a can't-miss attitude into the next.

"It made me mad," she said.

The second set was a one-sided story: Seles simply poured on the power and outhit Graf by drilling the ball at every white line eligible to receive punishment. Graf later attributed her lapse to a fleeting case of nerves.

But the tables turned yet again in the final set, when Graf somehow conjured up the same courage, and booming serves, she had used to advantage in the first. After saving one match point with a vicious backhand crosscourt return, Seles buried a forehand in the net on Graf's second set point and immediately trotted to the net to congratulate Graf.

In the opening set, Graf's only opportunity to break Seles came in the seventh game, when Seles compromised herself with a series of nervous errors. But pushed five times to the breaking point, Seles steeled herself and saved them all.

As is their nature, neither one of the champions ventured often toward the net: overpowering each other from the baseline has long been the pattern in their rivalry, and it continued to be the case yesterday.

"We both hit the ball hard, and whenever we play in the future, and we will, I'm sure it's always going to be strong tennis," Seles said. MATCH POINTS

The WTA Tour, without a sponsor since an acrimonious and premature dissolution of its five-year contract with Kraft two years ago, has received an IMG-solicited sponsorship offer from Corel Corporation, an Ottawa-based software and graphics marketer. The multiyear, multimillion dollar proposal includes the stipulation that the tour be renamed the Corel WTA Tour; the proposal has not yet been accepted by the WTA Tour.

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 1995, on Page 8008001 of the National edition with the headline: U.S. OPEN '95; Graf Shakes Seles Awake From a Glorious Dream. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe